At the opening of its Winter Session today, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) elected 16 new Vice-Presidents. Among them was the Head of the Armenian Delegation to PACE, Hermine Naghdalyan , who is also the Deputy Speaker of the Armenian Parliament

Wlodzimierz Bernacki (Poland), Axel E. Fischer (Germany), Roger Gale (United Kingdom), Adele Gambaro (Italy), Maria Guzenina (Finland), Tedo Japaridze (Georgia), Michael Aastrup Jensen (Denmark), Anneta Kavvadia (Greece), Talip Küçükcan (Turkey), Valentina Leskaj (Albania), Meritxell Mateu (Andorra), Hermine Naghdalyan (Armenia), Zsolt Németh (Hungary), Aleksandar Nikoloski ("The former Yugoslav Rep. of Macedonia"), Ria Oomen-Ruijten (Netherlands), Liliane Pahilovici (Republic of Moldova), René Rouquet (France) and Ingjerd Schou (Norway) have been elected Vice-Presidents of the organization, the official website of PACE reports.

The seats for the Vice-Presidents in respect of the Russian Federation and Spain remained vacant.  

Twenty Vice-Presidents are elected annually at the beginning of an ordinary session and remain in that office until the opening of the next session.